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John Thompson: Can We Control AI or Will It Control Us?

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2026 //
5

John Thompson, retired teacher and historian, knows that we are at a fork in the road with artificial intelligence: Will it control us or will we control it? The evolution and implementation of AI is driven by corpirations making huge investments and seeking huge profits. The well-being of children is not their uppermost goal.

He writes:

My head has been spinning since I attended the University of Oklahoma’s “Applied A.I. in the Workplace seminar.”

The session began with O.U.’s Dr. Shishir Shah who provided a detailed history of machine learning, starting with the 1940’s. Dr. Shah went into the nuances of the phases of A.I.  It culminated in today’s period of “Human Alignment” with its exploding data bases. He says that we’re entering an era where we don’t ask whether machines “think,” but what will A.I.  learn next.

In conversations with Dr. Shah, I was especially impressed with his insights into public education, and what we would need to do to prepare students for the 21st century. He also said:

As both Dr. Ali and Dr. Jones indicated, we all have to engage in open and transparent discussions about AI and its uses.  This will help improve our understanding of its potential impacts, which then can help shape appropriate guidelines, standards, and policies.  Engagement is important.

Then Dr. Kyle Jones, who leads field engineering for “Databricks,” warned that anything you think you know about A.I. changes in 6 months. Dr. Jones described a number of ways that A.I. provides useful results. But, he added that A.I. is making things easier for robots, and then asked, “What about human beings?”

Dr. Jones also questioned the role of corporate profits in rapidly expanding A.I.   

Then, Dr. Asim Ali, from Auburn University, explained that private investment in A.I. is dominated by the U.S., but we need international solutions, and more regulations. He focused on the recent history of A.I increasing, declining, and returning to growth as it approaches long-term growth. For instance, he used Anthropic’s “Claude” chatbot for an example of what’s possible, as well as its major shortcomings.

Dr. Ali advocates for engaging conversations about A.I. and its uses; if we are “passive about A.I., the future with AI will not be one we like.”  

He also reported on “the low likelihood that we will have [A.I.] Superintelligence anytime soon, but that there’s value in discussing a future with Superintelligence because it challenges us to determine our values when using AI and wrestle with the potential negative outcomes for human society.”

That brings me from the various, nuanced history and possible futures they explained to the more complicated paths towards minimizing the harms of A.I.  They offered complex appraisals of multiple paths forward. Perhaps we could refine technocratic skills to program A.I. so it doesn’t turn on humans. Or should we try to launch A.I. so that it then learns how to protect and make a better world for humans?

And, yes, companies want us to use more data, despite the environmental damage that results.   But shouldn’t we ask whether our rampant use of digital tools and social media is meaningful enough to justify the harms done by data centers? 

And, shouldn’t we do a better job of teaching critical thinking?

So, when I drove home from those sessions, my plan was to first reread my notes and to deepen my understanding of their research.  But, the first thing I found in my mailbox was Jill Lepore’s “We, The Robots.”

And Lepore’s opening sentence was a quote from Geoffrey Hinton, a “Nobel Prize-winning godfather of A.I.” “’Unless you can be very sure that it’s not going to kill you when you grow up, you should worry.’”

Lepore asks Daniel Roher, the director of the documentary “The A.I. Doc,” which quotes an A.I. insider who says, “I know people who work on A.I. risk who don’t expect their children to make it to high school.”

Roher further explains that the government has “abdicated the regulation of artificial Intelligence, just as it failed to pass any meaningful legislation regarding social media.” 

Lepore uses  Anthropic’s “Claude’s,” effort to create an A.I. “Constitution” as a “trying” example of the problems with A.I,  during a time when President Donald Trump is attacking the American Constitution. 

And, she asks whether Anthropic’s efforts are designed to “move toward human participation and democratic governance instead of relying on what appears to be technocratic automatism.” 

Lepore recalled reasons for hope when OpenAI formed a “Superalignment team” and President Joe Biden issued an executive order “calling for Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.  But “In Trumpworld, this was the equivalent of DEI for computers.”

And that brings me back to the O.U. seminar. I don’t know enough to compare and contrast its experts’ detailed findings on A.I. with those of the experts Jill Lepore drew upon. I heard them as being less pessimistic, emphasizing the long histories of challenges that humans have overcome. But, I believe the biggest difference between them is the tone of their analyses. 

For instance, Dr. Jones told me, “There is no single inevitable path that A.I. will follow. As humans we have free will and we get to choose.  So, his “response is to engage with this, rather than ignore it and hope for the best. After all, hope is not a strategy.” 

Categories Ethics, For-Profit, Technology

Denny Taylor: The Science of Reading is Behaviorism in a Digital Wrapper, Funded by For-Profit Corporations

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2026 //
1

Denny Taylor, a distinguished scholar in the teaching of literacy, has done impressive research to identify the origins of the “science of reading.” The roots of this latest fad are deeply entwined in the work of behaviorist Edward Thorndike. She explains how one view of literacy got embedded in the report of the National Reading Panel. Other views, other research was excluded.

It’s a fascinating article.

She writes:

This Substack post documents how George Bush and the Texas Business Council took control of how children are taught to read through their alignment with Reid Lyon and reading researchers on the Thorndike-Skinner-Engelmann-Carnine, stimulus-response, operant conditioning continuum, and delivered American children to technology companies, owned by hedge funds and private equity firms that capitalize on the profits of adaptive AI technology that constantly evaluates a child’s performance to adjust their instruction in real-time.

The post provides the historic foundations of how the integration of real-time adaptive AI into K-3 reading programs marks a shift from education as a social exchange to a closed-loop feedback system between child and machine. In future Substack posts I will focus on how this dynamic reshapes the learning process into a form of “distributed cognition,” where the boundaries between human and artificial thought – the child and the machine begin to blur.

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Taylor then goes on to document the relationship between Reid Lyon and George W. Bush in the late 1990s. From 1992 to 2005, Lyon served as  the Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch within the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health. He met up with Texas Governor George W. Bush and persuaded him that he had the key to reading success. Bush became a true believer in Lyon’s ideas and embedded them in No Child Left Behind after he was elected President in 2000.

In 1997, Lyon created the National Reading Panel, whose research leaned strongly towards one side of the “reading wars.”

Taylor narrates a historical account that should interest anyone interested in the origins of the “science of reading.”

She concludes:

The damage to the American public school system is extreme and for children the Science of Reading laws are catastrophic. The state laws that have been passed mandate beginning reading instruction in public schools that is developmentally inappropriate, and children’s health and wellbeing, as well as their academic development are at risk. The digitization of reading instruction exponentially compounds the risks.

For children in crisis in America the situation is dire, and we must respond. There is substantial evidence that between 60%and 70% of children in U.S. public schools have had Adverse Childhood Experiences and many of these children are coping with ongoing toxic stress which is compounded by 45 state lawswhich mandate state approved “Science of Reading” programs and excessive standardized assessments developed by technology companies owned by hedge funds and private equity firms….

The six year forensic analysis has provided extensive evidence that the experimental research studies that form the four cornerstones of the “Science of Reading” have no scientific validity. Of particular concern are the dog-whistles and lies that have been “sold” to policy makers and the public about the National Reading Panel Report, which has no scientific legitimacy. A compelling case can be made for the removal of the NRP Report from all documents that policy makers have used to require by law the fundamentally flawed “evidence-based reading instruction” in U.S. public schools. Such an action would remove the ban on cueing and the requirement of direct instruction in the “five pillars,” and thus, nullify the 45 state laws that mandate the Science of Reading. It would also mean that universities would be able to base reading courses on the peer-reviewed articles and books of reading researchers whose scholarship has been banned, and curriculum decision-making would be returned to teachers, parents, and local school districts.

Categories Curriculum, Education Industry, Ethics, Literacy

Why Is the Department of Justice Prosecuting a Leading Civil Rights Group?

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2026 //
6

The Department of Justice indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center by paying informants to infiltrate extremist groups.

CNN wrote:

The Justice Department alleges in the criminal case brought last month that the Southern Poverty Law Center — which has drawn the ire of President Donald Trump and other Republicans for labeling right-wing organizations as hate groups — defrauded donors by not informing them of secret payments to hate group members to act as informants.

The Justice Department alleges that SPLC has funneled $3 million to hate groups like the KKK, Unite the Right, and the Aryan Nations. SPLC also listed Moms for Liberty as a hate group, and M4L said that SPLC should be shut down.

One of the specialties of SPLC is compiling a list of hate groups and individuals who spread hate.

As an organization that was created to oppose racial injustice in the South, SPLC became a natural target for the GOP vengeance campaign.

The odd thing about the suit is that SPLC paid infiltrators, not the groups themselves.

This is a brazen assault on a significant civil rights group that has tangled with hate-groups for more than 50 years.

It is also a demonstration of the Trump administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department, turning it into a partisan cudgel.

Some large corporations have paused their charitable gifts to SPLC, including a division of Schwab that manages charitable gifts, Fidelity, and vanguard.

It was noted on Twitter that Stephen Miller, Trump’s policy advisor, is in the SPLC list of extremists.

Categories Civil Rights, Corruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Injustice, Trump

A Brave Pastor Decries the Misuse of the Bible and His Faith

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2026 //
2

Rev. Benjamin Cremer is a remarkable pastor, a man of integrity and courage. He was born to a fundamentalist family in Idaho and home-schooled K-12. But as he read the Bible, the stern fundamentalism of his youth faded and was replaced by the teachings of Jesus, most especially His call to care for and protect the neediest.

Here is his background.

He wrote recently in his newsletter about the hypocrisy of those in Washington who use the Bible to justify their cruel, greedy actions.

Here are some quotes from his account in X and BlueSky.

“I just can’t imagine wanting an entire secure ballroom for one man and not wanting gun reform for every child in America.”

*

“Imagine calling Renee Good and Alex Pretti “domestic terrorists” and calling immigrants “animals” then turning around and telling people they need to “tone down their rhetoric.””

*

“It is a broken Christianity that says “God protected him!” when a president survives and “thoughts and prayers” when school kids die.

A god who only protects the powerful and not the vulnerable is an idol”

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“Christians should be the loudest voices advocating confronting climate change, not its biggest deniers.

If we truly believe that God created all things, called it good, and called us to be stewards, then acknowledging and confronting climate change is the only faithful response.”

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“Reading the entire Bible and broadcasting it to the entire nation while actively taking food, healthcare, clean water, clean air, shelter, due process, and basic human dignity away from people is the exact kind of religious hypocrisy Jesus raged against.”

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“No amount of reading the Bible publicly can compensate for a heart that is committed to hate.”

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“One of the biggest lies we Christians have come to believe is that the best and most effective way to address the pressing issues of our time is to gain more control over others rather than become more compassionate towards others.

This is the opposite of the gospel of Jesus.”

*

“Paula White comparing the president to Jesus was met with applause.

The Pope calling for peace and ending the war was met with condemnation.

Beware of any Christian movement that measures loyalty to God by loyalty to the president.”

*

“Sean Hannity said that he was no longer Catholic in 2019. How many times is he going to leave the Catholic Church?”

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“Notice how Christian nationalists suddenly believe in the separation of church and state when Bishop Mariann Budde asks the president to be merciful, when the Pope asks the president to be peaceful, and when anyone suggests that the government should take better care of the poor.”

*

“If our Christianity causes us to defend the president rather than the poor, the powerless, the sick, the hungry, the homeless, and the immigrant, that’s when we know we are following someone other than Jesus.”

I love this man!

Categories Ethics, Religion, Separation of church and state

UNESCO Report on the Dangers of Ed-Tech: “An Ed-Tech Tragedy?”

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2026 //
9

I posted about this very important international study when it was first released in 2023. It is as relevant now as ever. Can we recognize failure and learn from it? Some European countries have. With some exceptions, we have not.

Ed-Tech is a major industry. Its profits are huge. We have allowed the hype and propaganda of the industry to remake schooling. Part of the marketing is the claim that “our public schools are failing.” The answer: buy more of what impairs learning. Or endorse school choice, charters, vouchers, and home schooling, even though there is zero evidence that these privately run schools are as effective as public schools.

Read the report. Reach your own conclusion. Did we dive into screens and laptops because they increased student motivation and effort? Or because we were swept along by the industry propaganda?

Three years ago, UNESCO released a major blockbuster report warning about the dangers of relying too much on education technology. The author of the report was Mark West. The title of the report is An Ed-Tech Tragedy? Educational Technologies and School Closures in the Time of COVID-19.

An alternate link: https://teachertaskforce.org/sites/default/files/2023-09/2023_UNESCO_An-ed-tech-tragedy_Educational-technologies-and-school-closures-in-the-time-of-COVID19_EN_.pdf

The puzzle at the heart of the document is the clash between learned experience and the imperatives of greed. We learned during the pandemic about the risks of becoming dependent on ed-technology as the main driver of instruction. As we reflect on the period from March 2020 to now, we can discern the damage that occurred to students when their teachers were replaced by virtual instruction: boredom, learning loss, mental health issues, loneliness, lack of socialization with their peers, lack of personal interaction with teachers. 

Yet with most people believing that the pandemic (or the worst of it) lies in the past, ed-tech corporations are focused on selling more of what has already failed. Why would we want to expand what has demonstrably proved inadequate and harmful to students?

You probably will take a long while to read the full report, but do read the summary and conclusions to whet your appetite. The overview concludes that the global reliance on ed-tech was necessary in the circumstances, but was a tragedy. Children need human teachers. They need people who look them in the eye and encourage them. Education is not a mechanical process; people are not widgets. 

The UNESCO report reviews the global evidence of the harm caused by dependence on ed-tech: 

[The report] exposes the ways unprecedented educational dependence on technology often resulted in unchecked exclusion, staggering inequality, inadvertent harm and the elevation of learning models that place machines and profit before people.

The summary says:

An Ed-Tech Tragedy? documents how widespread school closures and the hard pivot to remote learning with connected technology during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in numerous unintended and undesirable consequences. 

Although connected technology supported the continuation of education for many learners, many more were left behind. Exclusion soared and inequities widened. Achievement levels fell, even for those with access to distance learning. Educational experiences narrowed. Physical and mental health declined. Privatization accelerated, threatening education’s unique standing as a public good and human right. Invasive surveillance endangered the free and open exchange of ideas and undermined trust. Automation replaced human interactions with machine-mediated experiences. And technology production and disposal placed new strains on the environment. 

Visions that technology could form the backbone of education and supplant school-based learning – in wide circulation at the outset of the health crisis – had promised better outcomes. Ed-tech proponents held that the immense challenges of school closures could be met with technology and that deeper technology integration would transform education for the better. But these high hopes and expectations unraveled when ed-tech was hurriedly deployed to maintain formal education as COVID-19 tore across countries. 

An Ed-Tech Tragedy? recounts this tumultuous period, documenting the actions and decisions taken by governments, schools and technology companies. The publication contrasts the promises of ed-tech with the realities of what ed-tech delivered as a response to school closures that impacted over 1.6 billion learners and stretched intermittently from the beginning of 2020 to the end of 2022. The evidence and analysis highlight trends observed across countries and zoom in on the specificities of local experiences, creating a global mosaic of what students, teachers and families experienced when connected technology was elevated as a singular portal to teaching and learning. 

Aimed at general and specialist audiences alike, this publication shows how the abrupt and deep changes brought about by the recourse to remote digital learning during the pandemic continue to ripple through the education sector even as schools have fully reopened. It questions whether more and faster integration of technology is desirable for learners, teachers and schools and if ed-tech is, as it is often billed, a key ingredient of educational resilience.

An Ed-Tech Tragedy? posits that new principles are needed to forge more humanistic directions for ed-tech development and use. In-person schooling and teaching should be guaranteed even as technologies improve and connectivity becomes more ubiquitous. Governments need to anchor this guarantee in the legal architecture upholding the right to education, especially for young learners. Moreover, future applications of ed-tech must show greater concern for holistic student well-being. While academic learning is central to education, it is not the only component. Ed-tech needs to support the multiple individual and collective purposes of education, from socio-emotional and personal development, to learning to live together, with the planet, as well as with technology. 

In detailing what happened when ed-tech was deployed in response to pandemic school closures, as well as questioning why ed-tech was often elevated as a singular solution, this publication clarifies how the education community can move beyond merely reacting to technological change and instead play a more assertive role steering the digitalization of education towards the more holistic goals of education to shape inclusive, just and sustainable futures. 

The future of education needs to be a humanistic one. The lessons extracted from what is premised here as an ed-tech tragedy illuminate the ways technology can better foster education that teaches and revitalizes human values, strengthens human relationships and upholds human rights.…

Ed-tech was supposed to solve a problem but it created other problems.

An Ed-Tech Tragedy? examines the many ways that the hurried embrace of technology solutionism steered responses to a global education challenge directly towards ed-tech. Along the way, the logic of technology solutionism changed understandings of educational problems to be solved. The analysis presented here helps reveal, for example, how technological solutions deployed during school closures took a narrow view of education and focused almost exclusively on furthering the academic progress of students in pared-down curricular subjects. This meant that little attention was paid to other education goals, such as fostering curiosity and inquiry and supporting physical health, mental well-being and social and emotional learning. This analysis also shows how ed-tech, originally cast as a solution to maintain learning continuity in the face of widespread disruptions to schooling, has more recently been positioned as a tool to help reverse learning loss. This ‘loss’, however, grew out of the deficiencies of technology-dependent remote learning to preserve the pace of academic learning that would have been typical without school closures stemming from the pandemic. The problem that ed-tech initially set out to solve morphed from assuring the continuity of learning to remedying lost learning. The way the problem was reframed while maintaining connected technology as the centrepiece of the solution is an example of technology solutionism at work.…

Recognizing the chaotic pivot from in-school learning to technology-facilitated distance learning as having a tragic arc provides a forceful rebuttal to a growing consensus that the education sector somehow ‘advanced’, ‘leapfrogged’, ‘catapulted’ or ‘disrupted’ itself to a better future when it deployed technology on a massive scale as an interim measure to confront a crisis. The evidence overwhelmingly points in the opposite direction: education became less accessible, less effective and less engaging when it pivoted away from physical schools and teachers and towards technology exclusively. ‘Tragedy’ in this sense signals regression – a denigration of the status quo,rather than a desired evolution. The narrative that ed-tech should be or must be a central component of ‘building education back better’ warrants new scrutiny after a careful examination of the experiences during the pandemic.

The invocation of tragedy also facilitates awareness that connected technologies, despite their growing reach, power and potential, remain tools in a repertoire of many others to construct stronger, more agile and more flexible education systems that can respond and adapt to disruption. Other tools include strengthened teacher training and support; enhanced school leadership and pedagogical management of schools; curricular renewal; smaller class sizes; and improved physical resources and infrastructure for schools and classrooms. Crises that necessitate the prolonged closure of schools and demand heavy or total reliance on technology have been exceedingly rare historically. Future crises may present entirely different challenges. The trauma of the pandemic has, in many circles, functioned to elevate technology as an almost singular solution to assure educational resilience by providing flexibility in times of disruption. Investments to protect education wrongly shifted away from people and towards machines, digital connections and platforms. This elevation of the technical over the human is contradictory to education’s aim to further human development and cultivate humanistic values. It is human capacity, rather than technological capacity, that is central to ensuring greater resilience of education systems to withstand shocks and manage crises.

Overall, the pandemic is a case study in how technology in its current iterations is not yet a suitable foundation for actualizing the diverse goals that communities assign to education. Expectations that technology may, in time, help further increase the reach, improve the quality and strengthen the agility of education are valid. For now, though, the experiences since early 2020 have shown it to be an alarmingly brittle solution – one incapable of effectively responding to widespread and extended school shutdowns. For far too many students, it was a solution that either never started in earnest or quickly broke down. The sudden shift to ed-tech also accelerated a concerning transfer of authority away from teachers, schools and communities and towards private, for-profit interests. Additionally, the censorship, data extraction, advertising, top-down control, intimidation and surveillance that so often characterize current models of digital transformation have made education less free and, arguably, less capable of facilitating critiques of and positive changes to the status quo. [emphasis added by DR.]

Countries made massive investments to digitalize education through much of the COVID-19 pandemic. But it remains far from clear whether these investments will improve education over the longer term and make it an engine of just, inclusive and sustainable development, especially when compared with conventional school-based and teacher-facilitated education. The digital transformation of education may yet be a force for beneficial change. But the logic of technological solutionism and its associated business models currently steering this transformation, led largely by the commercial technology entities that are remaking so many aspects of society, tend to treat education and knowledge as private commodities and not as global public goods that provide collective as well as individual benefits.

It is hoped that this analysis and its use of tragedy as a metaphor might moderate the discourse and popular view that the pandemic has ‘unshackled’ education systems and ‘launched’ them into desirable futures characterized by greater technology use. Documenting the severity and scope of the many negative consequences of ed-tech responses during the health crisis inverts the triumphalist narratives that accompany many descriptions of technology deployments to address the educational disruption caused by school closures. A critical examination of the assumptions of technology solutionism and a review of the existing evidence provide a corrective and a counterargument to notions that more, deeper and accelerated use of technology is uniformly positive for education…

Throughout the review that follows, considerable evidence illustrates how the rush to distance and remote learning with ed-tech accelerated the privatization of education in many contexts. While some countries and localities managed a shift to digital learning with limited privatization of the educational experience, a defining characteristic of the technology-centric response to the educational disruptions of the pandemic tended to be the elevation of for-profit, private ed-tech companies. In addition to considering the ways reliance on ed-tech impacted educational inclusion, equity and quality, this publication also explores the complex and often symbiotic links between ed-tech and the privatization of education during the pandemic.The rush to distance and remote learning with ed-tech accelerated the privatization of education.

Most such reports tend to summarize the status quo. This one challenges it. It’s time to take stock before the Ed-tech industry takes control of our most precious asset: our children.

Categories Ethics, Failure, For-Profit, International, Technology

Jared Cooney Horvath Tells Congressional Committee How Screen Time Impairs Learning

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2026 //
15

Jared Cooney Horvath is highly critical of digital tools in the classroom. Horvath is a neuroscientist who studies learning, memory, and cognition. His most recent book is The Digital Delusion.

On January 15, 2026, he testified before a Senate Committee, where he linked the use of technology to declining academic performance, not just in the U.S. but in other countries.

Here is his written testimony with graphs, footnotes, and other evidence to support his thesis.

Take five minutes and watch.

What do you think?

Categories Curriculum, Ethics, Online Education, Real Education, Technology

Tennessee: Death Penalty for Women Who Have an Abortion?

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2026 //
17

This is insanity. Two Republican legislators in Tennessee introduced a bill to treat abortion as homicide.

There are moments in history when legislation stops being merely controversial and becomes openly barbaric. Tennessee’s House Bill 570 is one of those moments. Proposed by two Republican lawmakers, this bill seeks to classify abortion as homicide punishable by life imprisonment, life without parole, or even the death penalty. There are no exceptions for rape. There are no exceptions for incest. There are no exceptions for the health of the mother. This is not a policy debate. This is a war on women, and it is being waged in broad daylight.
But Tennessee is not an outlier. It is a preview.

The good news is that the Republican-dominated legislature killed the proposal. They would not go along with the insane idea that a woman should spend her life in prison or get the death penalty as punishment for an abortion.

A Tennessee House committee rejected an anti-abortion bill Tuesday that would have criminalized women for seeking abortion procedures, potentially allowing them to be charged with murder.

The bill failed for lack of support and didn’t come to a vote in the Population Health Subcommittee, leading supporters to sing hymns and protest in the Cordell Hull Legislative Building…

Groups such as End Abortion Now and the Foundation to Abolish Abortion that supported Barrett’s bill blasted the Republican supermajority legislature for claiming to be “pro-life” but refusing to support the legislation. They expect to revive the bill in 2027.. 

Categories Cruelty, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, Medicine

Secretary of Energy’s Former Company Made Huge Profits, Paid No Taxes

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2026 //
1

Finished paying your taxes? I bet you didn’t do as well as Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. Politico reported that the company founded made huge profits and paid no taxes. In fact, his company got a refund! It’s Trump tax policy at work for the 1%.

Politico wrote:

The company founded and formerly run by Energy Secretary Chris Wright paid no federal corporate income taxes last year, according to its regulatory filings, and actually got more than $10 million back from the IRS.

Liberty Energy, the oil field services company Wright founded in 2011 but left last year to join the Trump administration, was among several energy companies included in a report issued Tuesday by the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy naming 88 companies that together made more than $105 billion before taxes last year but paid no federal corporate income taxes.

Liberty recorded net income before taxes of $193 million last year but received more than $10 million back in tax benefits, according to its latest annual financial disclosure. The company paid $33 million in federal taxes for the 2024 tax year after making a net income of $403 million before taxes.

Categories Environment, Ethics, For-Profit, Trump

King Charles’ Speech to Congress

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2026 //
26

King Charles III came to Washington, D.C. to smooth over some rough patches in Britain’s relationship with the United States, all of it driven by Trump’s egotism and insults.

The King might have addressed those differences directly, but instead he chose to highlight the values and history we share. In his speech, he appealed for a revival of our strong partnership.

What was most interesting was not what he said, but what he implied. He referred to General George Washington. He mentioned Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address.” He said that an acre of land at Runnymede, where Magna Carta was signed, was designated as American soil, as a tribute to President Kennedy. I don’t recall anything he said about Trump, unless it was a perfunctory thank you at the opening.

On the issues, he took a strong stance against Trump, clearly but obliquely. Charles saluted our Christian heritage but then spoke of respecting all people of every religion and no religion.

He made strong comments about protecting the environment, in contrast to Trump’s hostility to the very idea of climate change.

When he spoke about NATO, which Trump berates, the audience applauded loudly.

When Charles spoke of the importance of protecting Ukraine, the audience leap to their feet and gave sustained applause.

Gracious, literate, articulate–everything that Trump is not–Charles was applauded by both sides of the aisle.

Why can’t we have a President like that?

Categories Democracy, Environment, Ethics, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Funding

Why Did Washington Press Corps Invite Trump to Dinner?

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2026 //
16

Kevin Cullen, a columnist for The Boston Globe, lambasted the Washington press corps for inviting Trump to be their speaker. What did they expect he would say? Did they want to be insulted as “enemies of the people” and “fake news”?

Sure, it’s customary to invite the President. But did anyone expect Trump to forget about his hatred of the media? Cullen thinks they should be more careful in choosing a speaker, like picking someone who appreciates the First Amendment.

He wrote:

So many questions after a deranged, thankfully inept gunman tried to force his way into the White House Correspondents’ Association gala, where President Trump was a guest.

The biggest one being: Why was Trump there in the first place?

Like all fascists, Trump hates a free press and has done his level best to humiliate, intimidate, harm, cancel, and even prosecute journalists and news outlets. Like all authoritarians, he has tried to limit press scrutiny of himself and his administration.

So what on earth were the White House press corps thinking when it invited this guy to their annual dress-up party?

It’s like inviting your obnoxious neighbor to a family barbecue after he relieves himself in your pool.

It’s like inviting a jackal to a tea party for a bunch of cute little bunny rabbits.

Let’s roll the tape:

In 2015, when he was running for president, Trump mocked New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who suffers from a congenital joint condition. Trump was just getting warmed up.

In 2017, after a Republican congressional candidate in Montana assaulted and body slammed a reporter for The Guardian, Trump voiced support for the attacker, saying, “He’s my kind of guy.”

In 2020, after MSNBC’s Ali Velshi was hit by a rubber bullet during a protest after George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Trump called it a “beautiful sight.” Trump misidentified Velshi as being with CNN, but, hey, all the fake news is all the same to Trump anyway.

At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in November 2024, Trump stood behind bulletproof glass and reassured his supporters he was safe, noting that anyone who tried to shoot him would have to shoot through a bunch of journalists standing in front of him, adding, “I wouldn’t mind that so much.”

More recently, the FBI, led by Kash Patel, the laughably unqualified frat bro whom Trump appointed as FBI director, launched an investigation of Elizabeth Williamson, a New York Times reporter who had the temerity to point out that the FBI is spending untold taxpayer dollars providing a SWAT team to “protect” Patel’s girlfriend, Weymouth’s own Alexis Wilkins, when she engages in risky public acts like getting her hair done.

Even more recently, after Saturday’s attack, Trump insulted CBS’s Norah O’Donnell and questioned her professionalism, calling her a “disgrace” for asking a question about the gunman’s manifesto.

If you’re noticing a pattern here, Trump really doesn’t like women journalists who question him.

I could go on — and I haven’t even mentioned the shakedowns of all the networks, and Trump using his influence so Edward R. Murrow’s storied CBS News becomes more like Fox News Lite — but you get the point. 

And yet, Trump’s press secretary stood before journalists after Saturday’s attack and claimed, with a straight face, that the leftist press and Democrats are responsible for the violent rhetoric that leads to attacks like the one at the Washington Hilton.

So what did the Washington press corps think was going to happen when it gave Trump a platform at its shindig?

Did they think he would have some Jeffersonian conversion, pronouncing that if given the choice between a government without journalism or journalism without government, he would choose the latter?

Thomas Jefferson believed strongly in the idea of a free press that would act as a watchdog against government corruption and overreach.

Trump hates a free press for those very same reasons. He doesn’t want the public to know about his cons, about him using government to enrich his family and his cronies. He can’t stand the idea of the press, or anyone, questioning his judgment, or pointing out the folly of his ways, about him starting a needless war when he ran for president claiming he would never start a needless war.

Trump resembles not Thomas Jefferson, but George Jefferson, the TV character who hated everyone and everything. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest Trump is more familiar with George Jefferson than Thomas Jefferson.

Why give Trump a platform to spew his fascist hatred of a robust, free press?….

Categories Accountability, Ethics, Extremism, Fake News, Fascism, Freedom of the Press, Trump
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